


Sweetbrier

by SofiaBane



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Actually secret exes, Auror Harry Potter, Because Tom Riddle is paranoid, But the real enemy is bureaucracy, Enemies to Lovers, Harry catches feelings, I'm really sorry Umbridge is here I just really needed external conflict, Lovers to enemies to lovers, M/M, Minor Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Secret Relationship, Tom Riddle is a jerk, Wizengamot member Tom Riddle, is not a canonical tag so let's go with
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 15:40:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18391355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SofiaBane/pseuds/SofiaBane
Summary: Tom Riddle is a Wizengamot member sent to audit Hogwarts in the transition after Dumbledore's death. Harry is an Auror assigned to provide his security. Also, nobody knows they're exes.





	Sweetbrier

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exarite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exarite/gifts).



> To exarite: I was so excited to get your prompt, I had a great time with it. Hope you enjoy!

“Harry! Harry, come here. You _must_ meet Tom.”

Harry is six months out of school, but he’s returned this evening for Slughorn’s Christmas party. He had wanted to see his friends in the year beneath him – Ginny is here, and Luna as her maybe-date, Harry is terrible at telling these sorts of things. And Hermione had said it would be useful to _network_ , that hideous word.

Harry doesn’t know what to do with his life because he had only ever anticipated a war. Grindelwald had orphaned him on Halloween 1981, and the Killing Curse that had rebounded off Harry had crippled him badly enough that the Aurors had been able to apprehend him at the scene. He had been imprisoned in Azkaban for most of Harry’s childhood, until a breakout in Harry’s sixth year. Hearing of it, Harry had gone straight to Dumbledore’s office. “I want to fight,” he’d said.

Dumbledore’s gaze had been sad but steady. “It is understandable,” he’d agreed. “But this is not your war.”

_But I am the Boy Who Lived_ , Harry nearly protested. Because he _was_ , as inherently useless as that title was. The wizarding world had rejoiced the first time Harry had defeated Grindelwald. It seemed inevitable that he should do it twice.

But Dumbledore deploys his intelligence, people loyal to him who wouldn’t ever cooperate with the Ministry. They tracked Grindelwald to a great fortress in Italy. At the start of Harry’s seventh year, Dumbledore had departed. Days later, he had emerged, weeping as he’d handed Grindelwald’s body into the custody of the Italian Ministry.

People said he brought Grindelwald’s wand back with him. He had come back terribly cursed, one arm blackened and shriveled permanently. But he’d said it was a meager price to pay to avoid a second war.

So Harry had no reason to be a hero; the Boy Who Lived has done little else with his life. Which brings him to Slughorn’s party tonight.

He steps into this circle, surveying the company. Slytherins, most of them. Purebloods, the independently wealthy sort. A few are in the Ministry, a few more manage estates and vineyards and the like. And maybe Harry’s got the wealth to belong with this lot, but – he just doesn’t. He expects _Tom_ is another snotty pureblood with nothing interesting to say.

And indeed, Slughorn ushers forward another well-bred-looking man, with high cheekbones and slicked-back hair, ending in an elegant knot at the base of his neck. “Harry, this is Tom Riddle. A brilliant student, one of my favorites!” Slughorn punctuates this with a hearty slap on Tom’s narrow back.

“Horace, we know you say that to everyone,” Tom chides, even as he subtly steps out of range of another slap. He holds out a slender hand. “Good evening, Harry.”

Harry shakes it. “Mr. Riddle.”

A tiny shift in his expression. “Justice,” he corrects. “But really, tonight it is only Tom. Would you like a drink?”

_Justice_ means he’s on the Wizengamot. Harry cannot fathom how. Everyone he knows on the Wizengamot looks about a hundred years old. “I’m sorry,” he says, as he follows Tom to the bar. “I should’ve – “

“Harry,” Tom interrupts with an air that is _far_ too familiar for strangers. “What are you drinking tonight?”

They linger near the bar, because Harry is hopelessly awkward at socializing, and Tom is continually collared by important-looking people. “I rarely come to these,” he says after the chief editor of the Prophet steps away. “But I wished to see Albus before he died. I hadn’t congratulated him properly on Grindelwald’s defeat yet, anyway.”

There’s a hollow sucking in Harry’s chest. The only person who will acknowledge that Dumbledore was dying was Dumbledore himself. “Are you close, then?”

The closest to a sincere smile Harry would see on Tom all night. “Goodness, no. We fought incessantly when I was in school. I found – well, I still find – all his ideas about emotional magic to be inane. Imagine believing he could have defeated Grindelwald with _love_.”

Dumbledore had told Harry he’d been saved by his mother’s love. It was a commonly-circulating idea among the wizarding world. Surely Tom knows that. “Right,” Harry says instead, feeling awkward.

And Tom is amused by Harry’s attempt at diplomacy, damn him. “Horace said you were quite talented in defense?” he asks, giving Harry a gracious out.

“I like defense,” Harry agrees. “I started a dueling club, in my fifth year. It’s still going on. We – “

But then another pureblood, an important-looking one, steps between them as though he hadn’t even seen Harry. “Tom, I didn’t know you were coming! Two glasses of tempranillo,” he adds to the bartender. “For old time’s sake, eh?”

And Harry accepts that he and Tom hadn’t been saying anything worthwhile anyway. He goes off to find Ginny and Luna.

They end up at a table with Marcus Belby and Zacharias Smith, the rest of them arguing about Quidditch as Luna serenely eats an ice cream sundae. By the time the lights dim and the band strikes up, Harry is on his second drink, and his smile is just a little wider. He lets Luna bring him to the dance floor.

And somehow, they end up being some of the last stragglers out the door. Not like Harry’s got anywhere to be tomorrow. He walks Ginny and Luna toward the towers, then onward himself to Dumbledore’s office, where the floo had been left open for guests tonight.

“Blood lollies,” he says to the gargoyle, who springs back. He pushes open the door.

He startles to find Dumbledore at his desk and Tom before it, hands braced on the gleaming surface. “ – you’ve got more chance at stopping the bill than I do, why won’t you just _tell_ Crouch he needs to rewrite it – “

“Harry,” Dumbledore says with incredible warmth, looking right past Tom. “Come in. I did hope to see you tonight.”

“It must be midnight. Sir.” He feels awkward stepping into the scene, but there’s not another way out of Hogwarts except perhaps apparating from the edge of the grounds. He gestures to the floo. “I’ll be going, it’s been a long night – “

“Please stay,” Dumbledore says.

So instead it is Tom who now approaches the floo. “ _Please_ speak to Crouch,” he reiterates.

Dumbledore only smiles. “Goodnight, Tom.” And he is gone in the flames.

When the green light of the floo has returned to orange-red, Harry makes a useless gesture in that direction. “Were you both… alright?”

“The demands of the Wizengamot are high pressure yet completely obscure to outsiders. And Tom is – passionate,” Dumbledore says. “About everything.” His mustache twitches in a bit of a smile.

Harry sinks onto the leather chair before his desk. “You should’ve owled, if you’d wanted to see me, sir. You know I’m not hard to find.”

“I’ve heard rather the opposite, recently. Kingsley says you won’t return his letters.”

Right. That. If Harry weren’t still a bit drunk, he wouldn’t have been able to say any of this. “I’m not sure the Ministry is right for me. I thought – I had to. Because of circumstances. But now there’s not a war, and I – “ _am lost_.

His fortune isn’t enough to live off indefinitely, but it’s more than enough to finance a few years of indecision. Ron and Hermione have both got Ministry jobs that they like, but Harry’s relationship to the entire Ministry is… complicated. He’s not good enough at Quidditch to go pro. Fred and George had offered him a shop position but that just seems trivial.

Dumbledore has his hands steepled before his face. “I _am_ sorry,” he says. “For the life with which the fates have burdened you. But there is no war.”

“I know.”

“That should not preclude your interest in defensive magic, and in – justice, broadly construed. Your empathy would be an asset to the department, surely. Or is there something more attractive to you?”

“I liked dueling,” Harry says. “And I liked – teaching.” It an awkward thing to say, but it’s true. He found it gratifying, teaching people how to save themselves.

Dumbledore’s smile is a bit sad. “In that case, you will have something to commiserate about with Tom, should your paths cross again, because my answer to that is the same as I once told him. Return to Hogwarts when you are older. The experience will make you a better teacher.”

“Yes, sir.” He feels stupid for asking, even if Dumbledore seems to think nothing of it.

A pause. “Hogwarts may not always be the haven it seems,” Dumbledore adds. “I cannot always protect it.”

“Sir – “ Harry has told Dumbledore he does not want to talk of his mortality. Not yet.

A click of his tongue, chiding Harry’s squeamishness. “Write Gawain Robards, Harry. You’ll be better equipped to protect Hogwarts, should you want to, with an Auror’s education.”

“Yes, sir. I will.”

“Excellent.” He moves slowly to get up; Harry rushes to offer a hand. “Thank you, dear boy.” And when Albus is steadied and Harry is stepping toward the floo, he adds, “Harry?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Give Sirius my best.”

“I will, yeah.”

Harry doesn’t technically live with Sirius anymore. After Sirius had been exonerated in Harry’s third year, Harry had moved in with him. Sirius had needed a lot, to begin with, and the Order had also been around frequently because none of them thought a fourteen year old would be an adequate nursemaid. So Harry had spent the last four years coming home to a home bustling with people, a queer sort of family coalesced around war and justice and Dumbledore. And he quite likes that home. His own flat, by contrast, is quite bare and solemn. To be honest, he’d gotten it mostly because he couldn’t bear the idea of bringing dates back to his godfather’s house. The walls were just too thin. But in all other respects, Harry prefers Sirius’s home to his own. So that’s where he’ll sleep tonight.

And Sirius is still up when he floos in, sprawled across the sofa with a book. “Hi,” Harry says, shaking floo powder off his robes. “Did you go out tonight?”

“Tonks and Hestia came over, with takeaway. You want some?”

“Mmm, maybe.” He needs water. Unpinning his cloak and shedding it as he moves toward the kitchen, he lifts his voice: “I saw Dumbledore. He says hi.”

“He says _hi_?” Sirius sounds amused.

“Well.” Water. Samosa, eaten over the sink. “And I… sort of agreed to write Robards?” he says as he re-enters the living room. “About beginning the Aurors’ program.”

He’s hesitant to say it, because his antipathy – _their_ antipathy – for the Ministry isn’t merely academic. Sirius and Remus, the two most important adults in Harry’s life, have been completely fucked by the Ministry at large, driven to the edges of society by shitty laws and a miscarriage of justice. He sees Sirius’s face go cold and closed off. “Sorry,” he mutters. “But I can’t – “

“You should do it,” Sirius interrupts. “It’ll be good for you.”

“If you don’t actually want me to, though….”

“Tonks says she’s bored. She’ll appreciate the company.”

“… Okay.” He vanishes his water glass to the sink, where a charm will wash it up. “Can I tell Moony tomorrow?”

Remus would come over on weekends, to make them breakfast and then spend the day out. Sirius had begged him to move in already, but… well, Remus had been alone for a very long time, in a lot of ways. They’ve stopped needling, for now.

“Yeah,” Sirius says. “He’ll be happy for you.”

“Cool.” Truly, he expects Remus will be as ambivalent as Sirius is, but this is as good as they’re going to do tonight. “I need to go to bed. Don’t stay up too late,” he adds with a grin, and the deep lines of Sirius’s face ease as he actually laughs.

 

A month later, and Harry is seated in Robards’s office, signing employment papers. “Defensive magic,” Robards muses, signing his approval beneath Harry’s own signature. “Perhaps we’ll train you up in evasion and put you out there as a bodyguard.”

A bodyguard. He’d never considered it for himself, being the precise opposite of those burly Muggle men who worked as bodyguards. But of course magic has nothing to do with physical strength. “Sure,” he says. “I mean, I’d like that.”

And then he’d plunged into Auror training. It’s exciting and exhausting and _fun_ , and he is happy. Harry is the best in his cohort of five at dueling, even if Savage tells him he needs to learn when to run as well. He comes home aching every night, smearing muscle relaxant potion across his back, and it satisfies him.

They’re only a month into training when Kingsley, who oversees the new recruits, brings them all into his office. “Best to get you into the field early,” he says. “So you’re not anticipating it for too long. There’s a meeting with Hogwarts beginning this afternoon. Potter and MacDougal, you’ll accompany the Wizengamot members on education to the meeting and provide security for them.”

Harry glances over at Morag, a Ravenclaw a few years above him who’s just preternaturally good at curses and hexes. She gives him a faint smile in return.

And when they follow Dawlish to the Wizengamot later that day, it is Riddle’s office where the wizards have congregated. There are three of them – Harry doesn’t know the other two – and they’re all in their most formal robes. Suddenly Harry feels self-conscious. If he’d known he was going somewhere important today, he might have spent more time charming his hair to lie flat that morning.

“John,” Riddle greets Dawlish. “Come in.” He’s gathering up an armful of portfolios. “I thought we’d see Robards today.”

“He’ll meet us there. I brought trainees.” Dawlish gestures them forward.

And Tom shifts the portfolios in his arms to offer his hand. “Harry.”

Dawlish’s eyebrows arch. “I didn’t realize you’ve met,” he says. “And this is Morag MacDougal….”

Harry is more surprised than Dawlish is, that Tom had remembered him after meeting once, to no real import. He shakes the hands of the other two Wizengamot members, and then they are moving to go. And when Tom stops by his coat rack to pin on a cloak, he drops his portfolios into Harry’s arms without so much as asking.

Wanker. Harry hadn’t been confident before how arrogant Riddle actually was, but now he can say for certain – wanker. Still, he carries the stack of portfolios the entire way to the meeting, but he does make a point to drop them rather heavily on the table before Riddle. This is not acknowledged.

And then the Aurors are obligated to stay for the meeting, for security’s sake. Harry and Morag take seats along the far wall, to watch.

And at the end of the day, the Wizengamot and the Hogwarts governors and the Gringotts goblins all dip into bows (this is _very_ old magic pureblood, it’s funny to see now instead of a modern handshake), and they’re all saying they will continue this work tomorrow. And when Harry catches Robards’s eye, he nods. “You’ve got a week of security. The boredom will be good for you.”

“… Yes, sir.”

“You and MacDougal can handle bringing the Wizengamot members back to their offices?”

“Yes.”

None of the Wizengamot spare Harry or Morag a second glance as they are collected to walk back through the Ministry, passing through _quite_ high security with the Aurors’ permissions on their wands. They drop the Wizengamot members off at their department, and go.

 

Tuesday begins the same. And while Robards had warned Harry he would be bored in these meetings, he’s really not. They’re discussing Hogwarts, and whether they could continue to fund it without more substantial Ministry input into the curriculum. There have been _incidents_ (nobody expounds on them, but they seem to be circumstances across Dumbledore’s time as headmaster), and there must be more research into the efficiency of the present curriculum on new graduates’ careers, and there need to be new standards on faculty, and if they could sack that _bloody_ ghost already….

Tom sits perfectly poised, and he’s saying that the Ministry’s funding education is a public service and public wellbeing, and Harry thinks he likes him, and then he says education is crucial for making patriotic citizens, and then he _definitely_ doesn’t. Purebloods.

And when Harry is walking Tom back to the Wizengamot department – they’re alone, Morag and her charges had followed a goblin back to Gringotts for something – Harry is chewing his tongue until he can’t contain himself anymore. “They wouldn’t actually close Hogwarts.”

Riddle looks over. “Close it?” he repeats, faintly incredulous. “Certainly not. It would be a public crisis to return the responsibility of education to parents. And what would we do with the Muggleborns?”

“Right. It just sounded – uncertain.” What would happen without Dumbledore. He’d kept the Ministry out for the past half-century, but the Ministry seemed to finally be reaching the limits of its patience.

“Yes,” Tom says in a sigh. They reach his office. “Come in.”

Harry does, if only out of curiosity. And when Riddle drops into his desk chair, he motions Harry to take the one opposite.

“Horace was convinced you’d never take a place within the Aurors,” Tom says, conjuring a tea setting with a sharp rap of his wand on the corner of his desk. “Albus said you’d come around. For the _greater good_.” He says the phrase with ironic precision. “Nevertheless, I was surprised to find you here.”

Harry raises his eyebrows at Tom over the edge of his teacup. Swallowing: “Were you?” he asks skeptically. “You don’t even know me.”

“Of course I do,” Tom says easily. “Sirius Black’s boy, Dumbledore’s man. Your relationship with the Ministry _ought_ to be contentious.”

“… Yeah.” He’s surprised, enough that he forgets to be defensive. “But I want to do better. The justice system should do better.”

“Indeed.” He stirs his tea with a wandless charm, lifting his finger so the spoon swirls. It is show-offy but it’s also irritatingly good magic. “Horace thought we should be acquainted because he anticipated you would be interested in returning to teach, actually.”

“I – might have considered it.”

“I did as well,” Riddle says. “Dumbledore said that at eighteen, I needed more practical experience. And now I find myself more – satisfied than I ever could have been as a schoolteacher. Otherwise you might have been in my class,” he adds, the corner of his mouth curving.

“You seem to have done alright for yourself.”

“As have you,” Riddle says. “But I’m sure having the Boy Who Lived would have stirred student interest. And perhaps also donor interest.”

Oh. So this wasn’t a social occasion. Harry had been wondering. “I’m really less of a hero than people would like me to be.”

Riddle clicks his tongue. “If it’s merely about public perception….” A handwave. “But I raise it only to warn you. Everyone still wants your endorsement. Moreso now, in your adulthood.”

“If the Hogwarts governors want me at a fundraiser or something, they can write me.”

“They certainly can.” He sets his teacup in its saucer precisely. “It will be valuable to have a few recent graduates in the room. You must have noticed, most of the group hasn’t been in school in a half-century.”

“If I can be helpful, I guess.”

“Good lad.” Tom rewards him with a smile, then vanishes the teacups before them both. “Goodnight, Auror Potter.”

 

Harry is never not off-kilter around Tom, that entire week. But he finds that he has come to enjoy it, a bit like the light-headedness of being drunk.

On Wednesday, Harry and Morag are each asked how prepared they felt for a career upon leaving Hogwarts. On Thursday, Tom looks to Harry: “Unfortunately, there are few Muggleborns among us. Could you speak to the measures that Hogwarts takes, to ensure students who grew up in the Muggle world have the best chance at assimilation?”

And by now Harry is used to Tom just knowing things he shouldn’t know, and his childhood isn’t quite a secret anyway, so. “Sure.”

By now the end of day escort was routine: Morag would go in one direction, Harry in the other. But when Riddle unlocks his office door that Thursday evening, he asks casually, “Have you got time for a drink?”

He does.

 

And so they take the floo back to Tom’s home, a small but well-decorated flat in south-east London. “I grew up in the East End,” Tom says with a shrug as Harry is examining the Muggle neighborhood from the front window. “I’m quite fond of the city. Whiskey or wine?”

“Whiskey, thanks.” He takes the proffered glass, swallows. “Do your parents still live nearby, then?”

A pause. “I have no parents. My mother died in childbirth.”

“Oh god, sorry – “

Tom waves it off. “I didn’t know she was magic, or that I was, until Dumbledore arrived with the Hogwarts letter. I grew up in Muggle foster homes, but it never lasted long. Too many _incidents_ , which I would later come to understand as accidental magic.”

“… Hey.” Harry’s going to look like a dick, going into accusation from this tender confession, but. “You said I was the _only_ one there who’d grown up with Muggles.”

A quirk of his red lips. “Did I? I don’t recall.”

“ _You_ , Justice Riddle, are a liar. And not even a good one.” He’s a bit punchy from the initial flush of whiskey.

Laughing, Tom gestures him onto an adjacent sofa. “Everyone in the Wizengamot has enough reason to discount me. Why give them one more?” He raises his glass in Harry’s direction. “Anyway, you told them just what they needed to hear. Well done.”

Harry thinks back to what he’d said: that Muggleborns could be lost or overwhelmed the first few years, trying to learn of an entire culture on top of the Hogwarts curriculum. “I don’t think I’m on your side,” he says. “I don’t want Hogwarts to make students more obedient. Or more _patriotic_.”

Tom clicks his tongue. “Nor did Dumbledore. It’s a wonder that the Ministry continues to fund a school that seems designed to raise rebellion. They worry that he still _recruits_.”

“He doesn’t,” Harry says, conjuring more ice into his glass. “I asked if I could go with him. For Grindelwald. He said no.”

Tom looks at him curiously. “Grindelwald’s war predated you. You shouldn’t have felt responsible for it.”

Harry shrugs. “Maybe I just wanted revenge,” he says, though that’s not it at all.

And Tom doesn’t take this as the joke that it is, but only nods thoughtfully.

 

Harry flips through the books on Tom’s nearest end table – esoteric magic, on protective runes and defensive charms and a book on immortality. Wedged within the last, he finds a small leatherbound diary that Tom had bothered to get embossed with his name but hadn’t bothered to write in. Harry sets it atop the pile. With more drinks, they eat salty cheese and sweet mango. And then, in the middle of Harry prattling about how he’d like to join a Quidditch rec league, Tom kisses him.

“Oh,” Harry mutters against his mouth, and then he fumbles to put his glass down so he can throw his arms around Tom’s neck.

It’s nice. Tom is precise and Harry is sloppy and so it’s a bit playful-contentious, even as they press into each other’s mouths, tongues spiced with whiskey. At the very least Harry has an athlete’s body while Tom is lithe – if he were a girl he might even be called _willowy_ , the stupid thought flutters through Harry’s heated brain as he throws his muscled thigh over Tom’s. As they’re pressing each other horizontal, Harry is satisfied to feel Tom getting hard against his leg.

Their mouths move to other more interesting places, earlobes and necks and clavicles. Harry’s hips are grinding downward, pressing himself against Tom’s own jutting hipbone. But when he reaches downward, his fingers seeking Tom’s fly, Tom makes a noise of protest. “Not on the sofa,” he mutters against the hollow of Harry’s neck.

“… We’ve got magic.” Clean-up after sex had always been trivial.

But Tom is rolling out from beneath him. “If we fuck in bed, you may stay the night. I thought it might be _cozy_.”

He’s mocking Harry, and Harry’s too hard to mind. “Yeah, alright.”

They end up on Tom’s sheets, Harry flipping Tom onto his back to pull open his robes. Still, Tom’s got a queer smile at the edge of his mouth as though he’s humoring Harry, the entire time.

 

They fuck, they sleep. And then Harry wakes up far too early to the sound of the shower. 4:45, the Tempus charm informs him.

A few minutes later, Tom re-emerges, dark curls still damply stuck to his forehead. He’s not surprised to see Harry awake. “I need to go in early. You can let yourself out, the wards will close behind you. There’s a good bagel shop across the way from the apparition point.” He’s pulling open his wardrobe, selecting a crisp robe in black with red embroidery at the sleeves.

Harry rolls over, scrubbing his face. “Yeah, I will. Cheers.”

Riddle glances back. “And don’t come in looking so freshly fucked, please.”

It’s not that Harry hasn’t had his share of weekday hookups. Or, while he’d still been at Hogwarts, late nights out before early morning classes. He and Dean had dated for most of their seventh year, so there’d been nights that they’d managed to slip off to the Shrieking Shack (“thank god it’s being put to better use now,” Remus had said when he’d found out, deeply amused) and only just barely scrambled into Potions class on time, with Ron and Seamus snickering at them both. So. Harry could get out and get showered before work, anyway.

He begins to look for his clothes, tugging on his discarded pants. A cleansing charm on his mouth in lieu of brushing his teeth. “Can I buy you breakfast?” When Tom actually looks a bit surprised, Harry frowns at him. “What? It’s classic. And charming.”

“You’re quite charming,” Tom reassures him, wry. “But no. Thank you.” He combs his hair back from his face, slips on polished shoes, and pins on a traveling cloak. “Have a good day.”

_Have a good day,_ as though they aren’t going to spend it together with the Hogwarts board. “You, too,” Harry says, and reaches for his discarded robe.

 

And so when Harry and Morag enter Riddle’s office hours later, Harry’s not really surprised to find Tom treating him with the same detachment as he’s had all week. “MacDougal, Potter, come in.”

“I’ve only gotten used to this,” Morag laments, as they’re locking up to walk to the meeting. The other two Wizengamot members make polite amused noises; Tom doesn’t look up from the notes he’s reviewing as he walks.

And then the final day of the meeting unfolds as the previous four days had. The Ministry agrees to a new budget for Hogwarts, contingent on some curriculum changes. They part with deep bows and good wishes.

And when Tom and Harry are alone, just entering Tom’s office for the last time, Tom says casually, “I’ll write to you next week.”

“… You will?” Because Harry had already tallied last night in his ‘one night stand’ column. It was not a very _long_ column, just a few people he’d met the rowdy summer after graduation, but still. He did not expect anything more of Riddle.

“Unless you would prefer I didn’t?”

“No,” Harry says. “I’d like that. See you next week.”

And when he walks back to the Aurors’ department, he’s got a fist pressed to his mouth, so his colleagues won’t see him grinning.

 

Tom sends him a sparse inter-departmental memo on Wednesday. He cooks dinner for them, Harry fucks him up against a wall, Harry leaves. Eight days later, Harry gets a note in his floo before work. He brings takeaway to Tom’s flat, Tom fucks him with his knees practically touching his shoulders, and he’s allowed to sleep over. And the week after that, when Harry knocks on Tom’s flat one Friday evening as they’d arranged, Tom has barely opened the door when Harry makes the proposition: “Can we go out to dinner first?”

Tom steps back, letting Harry into his flat and shutting the door before speaking. “I would rather not.”

“Not, like, a posh dinner. Hermione said there’s this great Greek place nearby, and I wanted to….” (They’ve spoken enough that Tom knows who Ron and Hermione are, at least.)

But he’s frowning. “What have you told her?”

“About you? Nothing. I just said I was coming this way after work.” Harry pauses. “I didn’t think this was real, but I also didn’t expect it would be _secret_.”

“It is,” Tom says. “I would prefer not to be seen – attached. To anyone. Is that important to you?”

“No,” Harry says. And it’s really not. It’s a good deal, as far as friends with benefits go. He’s never had someone cook dinner for him before. And the sex is… great, even as they’re still learning each other’s bodies. And really, what more can he ask for? “No, that’s fine.”

Tom hums. “It’s a matter of credibility,” he says, as though he’s got to further convince Harry. “I do not want people distracted by my personal life. And you’re quite young,” he concludes, nearly apologetic.

“I’m not _that_ young.”

“And quite famous. It would just be….” Tom waves a hand impatiently. “Spectacle. I haven’t got time for spectacle.” He’s bringing Harry into the kitchen, where wine is already uncorked and the beginnings of dinner are prepped. “Do you want carbonara?”

“Yeah, I do. Cheers.”

 

That night, Harry lets Tom tie him to the bed and fuck him hard, leaving bites and scratches everywhere he could reach. “Ahh, _fuck_ ,” Harry mutters when the charmed restraints are released and he slides bonelessly onto the sheets.

But Tom is up, entering the loo, coming back with a potion. “Glassroot extract. To heal all of that.”

“Tom,” Harry protests in a tired laugh. Tom remains there, holding the potion. “Tomorrow. Let me sleep with them, and then I’ll go home unblemished tomorrow.”

“… Fine.”

Harry’s had enough orgasms to begin finding Tom’s more prickly elements charming instead of aggravating, by now. “Can I do that to you next time?”

“If you’d like.” He’s pulling on shorts, as he doesn’t like sleeping nude, but Harry can’t even get up to brush his teeth. It’s fine. They douse the lanterns.

Then, Harry asks into the dark: “Can you ever see the stars?”

“What?” Tom is less guarded, close to sleep.

“From the light pollution. We could see some, in Surrey. But it was nothing like going to Hogwarts.”

“Ah.” Pause. “I thought of it as part of the magic of Hogwarts.”

“Yeah.” Harry licks his lips. “And it’s better from my flat too. I’m in a wizarding village up north, it’s in a quiet area….”

“Harry.” Tom rolls over, his eyes glinting in the dark. “If you’d like to invite me over, you should ask.”

“Would you come over to my place next week?” Harry asks promptly.

“Yes.”

“Cool.” And then he sinks deeper into the sheets, satisfied.

 

The next day is Saturday, and Harry gets to Sirius’s home mid-morning to find Remus already there and breakfast already eaten. Sirius only arches his brows as Harry kicks off his shoes inside the door. “So when do we get to meet them?”

Harry laughs, accepting a hug from Remus. “It’s nothing real.”

“Yeah?” Sirius prompts him.

Harry rolls his eyes over Remus’s shoulder. “Yeah. No one you know. A bloke,” he adds, because he’s dated both, but men more recently.

Remus hums. “Have him over when you’re ready.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he says, because it’s easier than saying _we’re friends with benefits and also secret_. He goes to pour himself coffee in Sirius’s kitchen.

 

Somehow, over the next few months, he and Tom gain all the trappings of a real relationship. Harry buys art to hang on the walls so he can have Tom over to a real adult’s flat. They cook. They know one another’s bodies by now. Harry tells Tom about Aurors’ training (grueling, he still comes home aching every night, but it’s satisfying), and Tom shrugs him off when he asks too much about Wizengamot business.

Another month in, and they are _allowed_ to go out to dinner, under glamours. “You’re joking,” Harry mutters when Tom draws his wand.

“I like you less than I like my career. Would you prefer to pick up some Polyjuice?”

“I’m a fucking Auror.” Polyjuice wasn’t outright illegal, but the entire industry around selling unsuspecting people’s hair along with it was. It just wasn’t a great thing to be caught buying.

“And I’m a fucking justice,” Tom returns easily. “My glamours are quite good. What would you like?”

“You’re the one who’s got to look at me tonight.”

A twitch of his mouth. “Fine. Here.” And he drops a warm glamour over Harry, making him taller with dark curly hair. For himself, he puts on a glamour he seems to have used before, with a strong jaw and hair longer than his own.

“Why would you need a glamour so often?” Harry asks, reaching for his keys before they depart.

Tom makes a self-deprecating noise in the back of his throat. “As you say, I am paranoid.”

He really is. Harry will never understand it. But with the glamour in place, they are free to be – well, _affectionate_ in public. Harry walks with his arm low around Tom’s waist, and somehow it’s fine. It’s the first warm night in late April, that time that felt like renewal, and….

And he knows he shouldn’t be feeling all the things he’s feeling right now.

Dinner is good, anyway.

But then, just as they’ve apparated back to Tom’s street, a bird swoops low before them. An _owl_. Which then lands on a mailbox and extends a thin scroll toward Harry. His stomach sinks.

Tom steps in close. “Minerva,” he says, and he’s right, her crisp handwriting scores the page. And then they’re walking faster toward Tom’s flat, because they already know what this means.

Harry reads the parchment as they walk. _Harry: Albus is dying. Come tonight if you wish to see him. He says he would like to speak with you._

God. It’s not a surprise – Dumbledore has been dying for more than a year – but it still hurts. Harry enters Tom’s flat behind him and goes immediately for the floo. “Are you coming?”

Tom’s mouth quirks. “Take off your glamour.”

“Oh. Right.” He casts _finite_ over them both, and then they are looking at each other in the yellow light of the lanterns. “ _Now_ are you coming?”

“… Yes.” Tom follows him.

 

The headmaster’s office is empty and the door is open, beckoning them out of the tower. They find Minerva and Filius in the corridor below, and they only give Tom a faintly surprised look before ushering them both in to an adjacent room.

It’s a space like a sitting room, where Ministry officials would sometimes be received. A few more faculty and some of the governors sit on sofas, sipping tea and talking in low, somber tones. Dumbledore himself is in a great armchair by the fire, stroking Fawkes’s shining breast.

So Harry approaches, taking a seat opposite. “Sir….” His voice sticks in his throat.

“Harry. I am so glad you could come. And that you brought Tom.”

They’d entered separately, but of course Dumbledore knew, he always knew. “What can I do?”

“I am writing this into my will, but I anticipate the legal strictures being what they are, it may be inefficient to wait for my executor to deliver this to you.” And from his sleeve, he draws a pale wand. “This belongs to you now.”

Harry doesn’t take it at first. It is not the wand he’d seen Dumbledore use, which is beautiful burnished wood. This is raw, with spheres down its length. He reaches for the carved handle. “But why?”

“It will go well with your cloak,” Dumbledore says cheerily.

Harry tries not to stare. He seems lucid, just cryptic as always. “Yes, sir. Thank you.” He slips it in the holster beside his own.

“You are so exceptionally good,” Dumbledore says. “Someday you will understand what a gift this truly is.”

Harry can’t stand this. He swallows harder. “You’ve been so – important,” he begins, but then Dumbledore leans forward to gather Harry into a hug. It helps.

 

And when Harry departs, he leaves Tom to have a conversation with Dumbledore behind a silencing charm. He takes the floo back to Tom’s flat and goes to take a very hot shower.

He’s just emerging from the bath when Tom steps out of the floo. “Oh,” Tom says. “You returned.”

“Should I go?”

“Only if you want to.”

He doesn’t. He wants company, desperately. He goes to pour a drink.

They’re not going to have sex that night. Maybe it would’ve been nice – Harry wouldn’t know, he’s never hooked up with someone as a result of trauma – but they’re both too deep in their thoughts. They put on the telly and keep the wine bottle on the coffee table before them.

An hour with some shit rom com ( _why_ , it’s not what either of them would watch alone), Harry happens to glance over at the parchment in Tom’s lap. _Given the Wizengamot’s interest in curriculum review and the overview of faculty at Hogwarts_ reads the line he’s currently writing. And Harry looks up in horror. “He’s not even dead yet.”

“No,” Tom says, unrepentant. “But he will be.”

“Can you just – “ Harry sets his wine glass down too hard. “Wait until after the funeral. This is grotesque.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Like hell I don’t. God, do you even _like_ him? You’ve never acted like it.”

And then – they’re into it. Tom drops the parchment onto the coffee table; the scroll furls itself closed. “Just because he favored _you_ does not make him a good person,” he says crisply. “For nearly a century he has eroded our culture, precarious as it is – “

“Shut up,” Harry says over him. “Either shut up or just call him a mudblood lover like you want to – “

“He _is_.”

Their magic is wild, hot, dangerous. Harry has a flash of wanting to hit Riddle, to throw things or smack him in the mouth like Vernon had done to him, and he’d tried so hard to escape these toxic impulses but they were still _there_. He and Riddle are bad for each other, they’re broken in the same way –

And then Riddle has drawn his wand.

“What the _fuck_ – “ Harry’s up, and he’s reaching for his own wand alongside Dumbledore’s in his holster.

“Just get out,” Tom says lowly. “This was a mistake.”

“What, letting another person into your life?” Harry spits, even as he’s edging toward the floo. “You’re a monster.”  


A small smile, the sort he’d give Harry when humoring him. “Yes, I am. Get out.” He gestures with his wand. And Harry can only summon his clothing before grabbing a handful of floo powder.

He’s still shaking when he steps into his own living room.

How the _fuck_ had that fallen apart so quickly? He and Tom had… worked together, mostly. They’d reached some quiet understanding not to talk about some parts of politics because they would just always fight, but Harry had always thought it didn’t matter. It wasn’t a _real_ relationship anyway.

He looks down at his cloak and boots bundled in his arms. After dropping them onto a chair, he takes the floo again. He wonders if the Order had heard of Dumbledore’s impending death.

 

It’s late, and Sirius and Remus have both fallen asleep on the sofa, a replay of an earlier footie match on the television before them. When Harry shuts off the set, they both stir. “Harry,” Sirius says, pushing his hair out of his face as he sits up. “I didn’t know you’d be by. Are you alright?”

“Dumbledore is dying.”

A deep sigh. “Yeah, he is. Come here.” He swings his legs off the sofa, so Harry can sit between him and Remus. “We went to see him this afternoon. Did you? We tried getting in touch, but your floo was closed.”

“I was out. And… we broke up. I think.”

“Oh, Harry,” Remus murmurs, running a hand across Harry’s shoulders.

He gives Remus a small smile. “Don’t pity me, it makes it worse.” Remus makes an amused noise in the back of his throat and doesn’t move his hand.

He doesn’t tell them much more – what is there to say, it was four months of a secret half-relationship – but it’s good to sit up with them for awhile.

Dumbledore’s wand still sits in Harry’s holster. He doesn’t know what to do with it.

Finally, he heaves himself off the sofa. “Can I ask Ron and Hermione if they want breakfast tomorrow?”

“Always,” Remus tells him.

“Cool.” He’s tossing the throw blanket from around his shoulders over a chair. “And you’d better not leave tonight. There’s no point, this late.”

Remus smiles. “Goodnight, Harry.”

 

He doesn’t hear from Tom again after that. He hadn’t expected to. Thank god they hadn’t really left things at each other’s homes, yet.

Ron and Hermione intuit that things ended badly, and Hermione tries to fish for Tom’s identity (“now that it doesn’t matter”) and Ron tells Harry that a rebound always helps. (At this, Hermione’s incredulous look. “How would _you_ know?” – “Babe, you _were_ my rebound off Lavender – joking, joking,” Ron protests as Hermione pulls away the sundae they’d been sharing.)

So he gets a rebound. He’d split up with Dean when Dean had gone off to a charms institute in Rome after school, but he’s home for the summer and receptive to hookups (“and nothing more,” he says. – “Thank god,” Harry agrees). He gets coffees with Cedric, as they’d gone out a few times during school; and Cedric is three years older so Harry thinks he might like the age difference, but Cedric is just so – _nice_ , it makes Harry feel bad to imagine defiling him. When he gets in touch with Cho, since they’d never managed to properly date at Hogwarts, she tells him he is lovely but she’s a lesbian now, so he missed that boat. He thinks of dating some Muggles, but then he realizes he has no idea what they’d talk about. So. His summer is trivial. It helps.

 

And then September comes, and Hogwarts re-opens without Dumbledore. Harry had heard through the Order that McGonagall wouldn’t take his place, but nobody will say who the new Headmaster or Headmistress will be. Regardless, Auror training has become significantly harder, so Harry is consumed by it for the first few weeks of September.

Until Hermione storms into their Friday pub night, clutching an official-looking paper. “Dolores Umbridge,” she says in a snarl, “is taking Muggle Studies out of the curriculum.”

Harry, Ron, and Ginny all try to pull her into the booth at once, before she creates a scene. And when there is a silencing charm enveloping them, Ron asks, “Who’s Dolores Umbridge?”

“The new headmistress.” Hermione is interning for Griselda Marchbanks, so she gets news on education before any of them. She sets down the policy paper she’s been gripping; they lean in. “Fudge said Hogwarts would only get funding if the Ministry could appoint the Headmaster. But – I didn’t expect them to choose so _poorly_.”

They get her a drink, and she’s able to impart a bit more information – Umbridge had worked in the Department of Magical Catastrophes, supervising the Obliviators, but she’d been great friends with Fudge. “She’s got no idea how to run a school,” Hermione says darkly. “But Fudge is just so _threatened_ by Dumbledore – even now! It’s horrid.”

The policy striking Muggle Studies from the curriculum is the only change so far, “but there will be more,” Hermione says darkly. They all sink into their pints.

 

A week later, and Harry is called into Kingsley’s office. “We’re requesting regular audits of Hogwarts,” he says. “As part of the agreement to install Headmistress Umbridge. And we need some security for our auditors.”

“Sure.” Harry likes defense. His reflexes have become finely honed over the summer, and security is at least a bit exciting.

“Excellent. I’ll be asking Morag to accompany you. You both worked well with Justice Riddle before.”

Oh, _goddammit_. Harry weighs out the option of telling Kingsley that he and Tom were sort-of exes. Unprofessional, he thinks, but his face must have given him away in some capacity because Kingsley arches his eyebrows. “Is that alright?”

“Yes, sir. It’s fine.”

“Good. I’ve asked you first because he requested you.”

“Riddle requested me?” Harry repeats in disbelief.

“No, no.” Kingsley waves his hand, gold rings glinting. “Ah, Dumbledore did. Before his death. He said you would always be an asset to Hogwarts.”

“Oh. That’s good of him.” A pause. “His portrait…?”

“Is asleep,” Kingsley tells him gently. “And has been since its installation. Don’t get your hopes up, Harry. It’s not him.”

“I know. I won’t.”

“Good.” He slides over the contract for security: visits to Hogwarts, at least bimonthly but maybe more frequent, with notice. Physical and magical security provided to Justice Tom M. Riddle and any accompanying Ministry employees. He’s getting paid very well to do this. “Send in Morag, would you?” Kingsley asks, and Harry gets out.

 

It’s only the night before the first audit that he comes to think he’s made a mistake. Tom makes him angry every time he thinks about him, how – detached and indifferent and patronizing he could be. If he pretends tomorrow that nothing ever happened between them, Harry is going to lose his shit.

Maybe he should say something publicly, ruin the stupid secrecy he stupidly put up with for months. _Your Wizengamot wunderkind hates emotional intimacy but loves having his nipples bitten._ (Which, _fine_ , is not even so scandalous, but Tom would hate having anyone know he had normal human desires at all.) Maybe he should drop a pair of pants onto Riddle’s desk and say he’d left them last time he was over. Maybe it should be a vibrator instead.

Harry is doing all this useless seething in the shower, worked up enough that it takes a minute to realize he’s used up all the hot water. Anyway. Wanker.

 

They’ll take the Aurors’ private floo into Dumbledore’s office – the Headmistress’s office now, Harry thinks with a twinge. When he’d mentioned this assignment to Hermione, her face had gone dark. “Tell Riddle that all changes in curriculum must be approved by the full board and the Department of Education,” she’d said. They’d heard nothing good about Umbridge.

But now Harry and Morag are waiting by the floo, when Robards brings Riddle and another Wizengamot member into the room, a woman who had been in the meetings about Hogwarts last year. “Excellent,” Robards says upon seeing Harry and Morag at their stations. “Justice Riddle, Harry Potter and Morag MacDougal.” And when Harry extends his hand as though they’re just being introduced, Tom’s expression is as indifferent as always. “And Justice Grimshaw.” Harry shakes the hand of the woman beside Tom.

“The Headmistress has been made aware you’re coming,” Robards goes on. “She won’t interfere. Give me your wands.” Harry and Morag hand them over; Robards puts on permissions to get anywhere in the castle they may need to. And when that is settled, they enter the floo.

When they step out, Harry thinks there must have been a mistake. The room is _pink_. Gauzy, dreamy pinks with porcelain and lace everywhere. Fawkes is gone (living with Hagrid, Harry knows, but still his absence feels foreboding) and two small grey kittens lie asleep in a basket in his place.

“Ah, _guests_ ,” a woman croons. Dolores Umbridge herself had been nearly camouflaged behind her desk as she’s in a lacy pink cardigan that matches the drapes. “Come in, please. Justice Riddle, Justice Grimshaw. Aurors,” she addresses them in a sweet smile.

“We’re here to speak about the school’s transition since Dumbledore’s death,” Tom says. “And I intended to speak to the faculty first.”

“May I show you to their offices?”

Tom gives her a bland smile. “I haven’t been away from the castle long enough to forget them, yet.”

So the four of them depart, toward the dungeons to speak to Slughorn before his morning class. And Harry’s at the right angle to see Tom’s notes in his portfolio. _Slughorn. McGonagall. Sinistra_. “What about the Muggle Studies professor?” he asks, forgetting for a moment that he’s only here for security.

Tom doesn’t cover his notes or otherwise acknowledge that Harry is reading over his shoulder. “Charity Burbage, and no.”

“But her class is getting cancelled – “

“ _Auror_ Potter,” he says, and the edge on his title is like broken glass. “It is not your place to perform this audit. It is mine.”

“Fine,” Harry mutters, and only when Morag shoots him a look does he amend it to, “Yes, _sir_.”

And when Tom glances at him, they are both undeniably thinking that the last time Harry had uttered those words, it had been during a spanking.

Tom and Grimshaw speak to Slughorn in his office, with Harry and Morag stationed outside the locked door. Silencing charms were dropped almost tangibly around the area, but Harry couldn’t think why. Slughorn was not the sort to say anything controversial or subversive.

And then there’s the click of heeled boots on the dungeon floor, and McGonagall rounds the corner. “MacDougal,” she says, unsurprised. “Potter. They’re meeting with Horace?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Excellent.” She steps around them to knock on the door.

“Is the school… alright?” Harry asks her lowly, examining her lined face as though it were an indication.

“The Ministry’s input into the Hogwarts curriculum is valuable,” Minerva says crisply, and then the door opens and Tom lets her inside.

 

After that, Harry and Morag stand guard outside a meeting with Sinistra and Flitwick. Then Tom and Grimshaw find the Head Girl and Head Boy at lunch, who both give smiling polished answers about how the new conduct policies against congregation are making students far more diligent and independent.

Then there is the meeting with Professor Umbridge herself.

Morag is stationed outside the office; Harry just inside. When he catches her eye, she shrugs. “I prefer it,” she says in an undertone, before drawing the standard surveillance ward before herself. Harry steps inside.

McGonagall has also come to this meeting, and she and Umbridge sit across from each other rigidly. “Justices,” Umbridge says, conjuring a tea setting with tiny biscuits in the shape of daisies. “Your day has been satisfactory?”

“Quite.” Grimshaw is withdrawing a scroll from her portfolio, shaking it out. “All of your curriculum changes must be approved by the Hogwarts board before implementation.”

“Of course. We are meeting next week.”

“Yet you’ve already asked Professor Crowley to use an alternate defense textbook.”

“It would be silly to get any further into term only to switch textbooks then. He hasn’t complained.”

“Hasn’t he?”

“Well, not to _me_ , at least,” she says with a tinkling laugh.

“And your plans for the Muggle Studies position?”

“We are looking forward to bringing in more relevant and efficient course offerings. Our alumni surveys show that Muggle Studies was the course least utilized by graduates in the workplace.”

“It was only a survey of alumni still living and working in the wizarding world,” McGonagall interjects. “Not those who now spend the majority of their time in the Muggle world.”

A sweet smile. “We didn’t want to burden the wizards who have withdrawn from our society.”

“We _owe_ the ones who haven’t found employment in the magical world.”

“And with the enhanced curriculum, future students will be more successful,” Umbridge replies, lifting her teacup as though Minerva had just made an excellent point.

“It’s bad data.”

She clicks her tongue. “If I hear that any students truly _miss_ Muggle Studies… well, there are graduate courses to send them to. One in Switzerland, I believe.” She gives Minerva another bright smile. “Really, it has surprised me how _conservative_ all of Albus’s staff have been on these matters. He was such a stringent advocate for progress.” Pause. “I daresay he would have wanted this.”

Minerva is seething silently; Grimshaw is tense; Tom is indifferent. And not that anyone is looking at him, but Harry’s got his hands clenched tightly inside his sleeves. This _awful_ woman.

“This is all really the board’s decision,” Grimshaw says. “And we’ll revert any curriculum decisions you make without them.”

“Of course, dear.”

Grimshaw’s eyebrows arch unpleasantly. “ _Justice_ ,” she corrects.

“Justice,” Umbridge agrees. “But the Ministry has just recommended three new members to the board for this term. After all, Albus ran this school in such a – _particular_ way, it will be good to distance ourselves from such outsized influence. Don’t you agree, _Justice_ Riddle?”

Tom had never fully told Harry what antipathy existed between him and Dumbledore, but apparently it’s known across the Ministry. “My feelings on either pedagogy or administration are irrelevant,” he says. “We are only here to see that they are being carried out as agreed upon.”

“I hope I am making your job simpler than he did,” she says with a smile.

“Yes,” Tom says, and Harry thinks he could kill him.

And then this hellish meeting draws to a close. They agree to meet again next week with the new school governors. Minerva says she’ll let them out through her own floo.

Harry is seething the entire way back through the Ministry. Tom and Grimshaw walk between Harry and Morag; Tom is telling Grimshaw that the newest governor appointed is a man who regularly goes foxhunting with Fudge, so that’s bloody great.

When they reach Tom’s office first, he spares a look to Harry and Morag. “Until next week,” he offers dryly.

And Harry can’t help himself. “If she hasn’t closed the school by then,” he agrees, practically snarling the words.

Tom looks at him, amused and skeptical and infuriating. “Why would she close the school?” he asks. “It is quite valuable to her. And to Fudge.”

“Just because you hate Dumbledore doesn’t mean you get to erase him – “

“Auror Potter – “ “Harry – “ Grimshaw and Morag try to speak at once.

But Tom steps in, cornering Harry against the wall, placing both hands on his shoulders. “When Dumbledore came to deliver my Hogwarts letter,” he says in a deceptively pleasant tone, “he set fire to the wardrobe that contained everything I had ever owned, everything I’d carried between homes. Because he could. Not everyone had such a _nurturing_ relationship with him as you did.”

“So what,” Harry snaps. “All the decisions he made for the school – he _loved_ Hogwarts.”

“As do I.”

It’s startling in its own way – Harry knew Tom as someone above such squishy sentiments as love, so even this meager statement feels like uncharacteristic vulnerability. “Then save it.”

“What the hell do you think we’re doing,” Tom mutters, releasing Harry’s shoulders. He’s finished with Harry altogether, stepping back to look to Grimshaw. “Leonora, may I have a minute alone?” They enter his office, leaving Harry and Morag in the corridor.

“Harry, what the hell,” Morag mutters. “If they go to Kingsley, you’re getting sacked.”

Last week, he would have said that was fine. But now he’s invested in Hogwarts’s safety; and given that Dumbledore had wanted him there, he assumes Kingsley won’t take him off the assignment regardless. “Maybe,” he demurs. “I’ll apologize later.”

“Hm,” Morag says doubtfully, as they walk back to the Aurors’ department.

 

It’s stupid, but that night Harry has to come home to wank. He and Tom had fought as foreplay, all the time, and today stirred some old feelings in him. Still, when he casts a cleaning charm to vanish the creamy streak up his stomach – well, it wasn’t his proudest wank.

He wonders if he could goad Cedric into being mean to him. Just a little.

 

Unsurprisingly, the next morning he gets summoned into Kingsley’s office. “Good working with you,” Morag says, flicking her wand lit in sarcastic memorial.

“Yeah, yeah.” Harry goes.

Kingsley charms the door behind him locked immediately. “Harry.” He runs his large hand over his face. “What did you do? I got both of them in here yesterday – “

“Sorry, sir. I meant to apologize when I next saw them – I guess it doesn’t matter now – “

“It matters very much,” Kingsley says grimly. “Grimshaw wanted you out, Riddle said he wouldn’t let you, so – we were in the office quite late last night.”

Harry blinks. “Riddle wouldn’t let me… what?”

“Let you off Hogwarts. Said he’d only go back if you did. And as little as he and Dumbledore have _ever_ agreed upon – you’re going back next week. Somehow.”

It would have been better if Tom had gotten him sacked himself. Harry’s got no idea what he expects in exchange for this… intercession. He supposes he’ll find out soon enough. “Thank you, sir,” he says. “I, uh – sorry. But everything she’s doing with Hogwarts….”

“It is not our job to make policy,” Kingsley tells him, though of course he knows that. “If everything she’s doing is according to regulations, then – hold your tongue.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And apologize to Justice Grimshaw.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And whatever – _terrible_ relationship exists between you and Riddle….” He doesn’t mean romantic. Tom had put a lot of effort into being publicly sexless and unattached. “Please don’t bring it here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you got anything else to say now?”

Hogwarts is going to be destroyed and he harbors some suspicion that Riddle would let it happen, out of propriety or some political chess game or his longstanding antipathy for Dumbledore. So he’s invested in keeping Hogwarts safe for its own sake, but also keeping it safe from Riddle. Kingsley can know none of this. “No, sir. Next time I’ll be – quieter.”

A twitch of Kingsley’s lips. “Please do,” he says, and with a flick of his wand he unlocks the door again.

 

That Saturday is spent with Ron and Hermione, sitting in the bleachers of Ginny’s Quidditch rec league practice. Hermione peppers Harry with far more questions than he can answer, about Hogwarts and Umbridge. “I ought to take a page from Rita’s book,” she mutters, pushing her hair out of her face in agitation. “But the chance my animagus would be anything worth spying in….”

“Hermione,” Ron chides, amused.

“McGonagall was furious,” Harry tells them. “I’ve no idea how they work together. And Grimshaw was quite cool. And Tom was indifferent,” he says flatly.

They both look at him peculiarly. “ _Tom_?” Ron echoes.

“… Riddle. Justice Riddle.”

Ron slaps his forehead. “ _Him_?” he asks. “You were shagging _him_ , of all people?”

Well, he botched that secret with one mere syllable. “It wasn’t serious,” he attempts to defend himself. “And – so what?”

“You know how much dark magic he’s been involved in? Not directly, but – he’s friends with everyone Dad’s ever had to raid.”

_Friends_ , Riddle went to almost the same lengths to conceal his friends as he did his partners. Harry had only been vaguely aware of the purebloods whose company he kept. “He was a Slytherin,” he says. “Also – god, don’t make me defend him. We ended so poorly.”

Ron’s face softens. “Sorry, mate. Just – be careful. ‘Specially if he’s got it in for you now.”

“… Yeah, he might.”

This entire time Hermione had had her fist pressed to her mouth, taking in this revelation. “We can find you _so_ much better. Someone who’s actually kind, to begin with.”

“Maybe I like dating arseholes.”

She rolls her eyes. “Then we’ll get you an arsehole who at least doesn’t make you keep secrets. Honestly.”

“Hermione can get back in touch with Cormac, ask if he’s into blokes,” Ron offers, making Hermione shove his shoulder with a laugh. But then he sobers. “He’d better have been good to you. Even if he’s an amoral, dark magic-obsessed, Slytherin git.”

Harry shrugs. “He was good to me,” he promises his friends. “And now – ah, I blew up at him after Hogwarts? I told him to do something before she ruined the school. And he went to Shacklebolt and said I _couldn’t_ be sacked.”

“And now you owe him?” Hermione asks dubiously.

“God, I hope not. I mean,” he adds at her look, “no, definitely not. It’s just… Slytherins. Always an ulterior motive with them.”

 

But Tom’s got nothing to say to him when they convene in the Aurors’ department. A nod to him and MacDougal, a handshake for Shacklebolt who enters behind them.

“The school governors travel with their own security,” Kingsley says to Tom and Grimshaw. “We got word at least one of them would be in attendance today.”

“Do you know whom?”

“No.”

“Hm.” Tom reclasps one cufflink and says nothing more. But Harry notes that the robes he wears are more imposing than last week’s, traditional and heavy. It does not bode well for Hogwarts’s future.

 

This meeting is no better than the last. The governor who attends is a blustering old man, reminiscent of Fudge himself, and Harry infers this is the hunting partner Tom had spoken of last week. “We quite support Dolores rearranging the classes on offer,” he says, mopping at his brow with a damp handkerchief. “Muggle Studies is fine as an academic pursuit, but to handle practical concerns…. And Divination! Do you know how much Dumbledore was paying to retain that woman?”

“I do,” McGonagall says evenly, “as I still handle the payroll myself.”

The governor brandishes his handkerchief in McGonagall’s direction. “Minerva, you should be insulted. She makes as much as you do, while all _she_ does is lounge in her tower, smoking goatweed and drinking cooking sherry – “

“That’s quite enough, Mr. Pillburn,” McGonagall interrupts, in such a tone that makes clear she’d been his teacher once and he will still listen to her now. “We may discuss a line item budget another day. Today we are discussing the course offerings. And what you might recommend to the students if Muggle Studies is no longer available to them.”

“Current events,” Umbridge offers. “Politics. Students emerge from this school _so_ illiterate in the political realities of our world. We’ve found most of your new graduates don’t even know how the Ministry defeated the Dark Lord Grindelwald!”

McGonagall makes a strangled noise in the back of her throat. “I beg your pardon?”

“A good, _comprehensive_ class in current events,” Umbridge says with satisfaction. “You _must_ do something about that history course, anyway. What _do_ we pay Professor Binns?”

“Nothing,” McGonagall says when she’s composed herself. “We pay him nothing. If you’d like to hire a current events instructor, you will need to post a job listing by December.”

Umbridge’s pink smile goes wide. “Oh, I thought I would give teaching a try myself,” she says brightly.

McGonagall stares. “Headmistress, you’ve got quite enough responsibilities.” She only barely keeps her voice neutral.

“You make teaching and administration look so effortless. I’m sure it can’t be _that_ hard.”

“It is,” McGonagall says flatly.

Umbridge tsks. “I’m _quite_ immersed in Ministry politics; they would be fortunate to hear from an insider. And think of the guest speakers we could bring in! Gregory,” she says, turning to Pillburn, “would you grace us with a guest lecture?”

“Yes, Headmistress.”

“You see?” She looks from McGonagall to Grimshaw and Tom. “Innovative curriculum, for a new era.”

Everyone in the room understood this would be a propaganda delivery mechanism, yet nobody is _saying_ it. Harry is particularly livid at Tom, who, Slytherin though he was, could be blunt and unrelenting when he knew he was right. He is silent now.

With Umbridge and the governors all ostensibly behind this, there’s not much that McGonagall can do, nor the Wizengamot, and certainly not Harry. He’s taken to wearing Dumbledore’s wand alongside his own to these visits to Hogwarts as – fortitude, or commitment to his memory, or something – and it seems to itch now. If Harry’s not careful, he’s going to shoot off some accidental magic, as though he’s a kid. He swallows these feelings.

Grimshaw lifts her quill from her ledger. “We will require your c.v. and a statement of intent to teach,” she tells Umbridge, “as the Headmistress may not hire herself.”

Another small tsk. “As you wish. I don’t know why you would turn me down. I wouldn’t even require an additional salary. Which means you would be able to pay Sibyl for another year,” she says, with a sweet glance in McGonagall’s direction.

Behind Harry, there is a small wooden crackle.

Nobody else hears it. He’s stationed at the door; they all sit deep within the office. But it is his magic, rebelling against all these pent-up feelings. He searches his mind for the calming exercises they learns in Aurors’ training. Four count breathing – in, hold, out, hold –

_Crack_.

They do hear it this time – every head swivels toward the door, and they’re all drawing their wands as Harry is. He sees the damage as his magic pulses once more, and a mounted shelf beside the door shudders. It is going to crash to the floor in just a moment –

His containment spell just catches it as the wall mounts give way, but then an entire shelf’s worth of decorative porcelain smashes against the forcefield of the spell. It is deafening.

Everyone is on their feet now, tense at the chaos, but Harry’s spell has diffused his magic, and nothing more follows. “Termites,” McGonagall says, and Harry is unsure whether she understands what actually happened. “You should really speak to Mr. Filch, Dolores.”

“What can that squib do, that magic can’t,” Umbridge mutters, striding forward to assess the damage. She might be… crying? Her eyes are very bright as she surveys the smashed plates. “Oh dear,” she says in a sigh, only loud enough for Harry to hear. Turning back to the group: “Would you excuse me? I need – some time alone.”

McGonagall and Grimshaw exchange an incredulous look. Tom unfolds his long legs and scoops his portfolios from the coffee table. He hadn’t said a word throughout, and Harry – just can’t stand him right now. He could be so useful, if he actually wanted to be. Instead, he shakes the hands of Pillburn, McGonagall, and then Umbridge herself as he exits. Grimshaw follows; Harry takes up the rear.

It’s only when Tom falls in step beside him, leaning in close, does he breathe into Harry’s ear, “You absolute _child_.”

“Piss off,” Harry mutters, squaring his shoulders to look professional even as he says it.

“You always have been the reactive sort.”

_Always_ , as though Tom knows him, understands him. “Piss off,” Harry repeats, and this time he’s casting a tiny Muffliato just in case they might be overheard. Noticing, Tom smirks. “Not like _you_ were doing anything useful,” Harry adds.

A click of his tongue. “Dolores is not the sort to be _reasoned_ with. Also,” he presses his wand flat against Harry’s chest, “didn’t Auror Shacklebolt have quite a lot to say to you about insubordination?”

“I’m not _your_ subordinate,” Harry says, shoving the wand away.

“Ah, but for the moment, you really are. I should have spanked you for speaking to two Wizengamot members so brazenly.”

“God, I wish you would.” When Tom arches his eyebrows, Harry feels himself go hot. “So I could bloody curse you. Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Of course not.” He steps away.

 

Harry wanks to this later that night.

It’s stupid. He doesn’t _like_ Tom, and he doesn’t like feeling this way about him. He wonders if it would help to go meet someone in a gay bar – Muggle, not wizard, as magical gay bars are just too insular for what he wants right now. Instead, he just brings himself off in the shower, and again before falling asleep. It’s ridiculous, but at least he sleeps well.

 

The next visit to Hogwarts a fortnight later brings the revelation that Umbridge has passed a decree banning all non-Prophet newspapers. “It is important to teach students about credible media,” she says, when Riddle and Grimshaw stop to read one of the posted signs outside her office.

And the visit after that, Umbridge says Christmas will not be celebrated this year. “A Muggle holiday,” she sniffs. “Really, it’s as though we’re planning our own genocide.”

“Dolores,” McGonagall says. “There are no _genocides_ on the horizon. Don’t be dramatic. Even if there were, their harbinger would scarcely be a Christmas tree.”

Umbridge offers her a pitying smile. “You do always believe the best of people, don’t you?”

“… Not always.”

 

When they return to the Ministry late that afternoon, Harry storms into Tom’s office right behind him. “ _Do something_ ,” he demands, catching the door and swinging it closed hard.

Tom seems sincerely taken aback for a moment, then his red mouth settles into its typical infuriating smile, wry and a bit patronizing. “What do you imagine I could do?”

“ _Anything_ more than your fucking silence would be great, thanks.”

Despite Tom’s chiding, Harry knows he appreciates biting sarcasm. He did when they were together; his eyes still light with interest now. And when he lays one cool hand on Harry’s shoulder, with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, Harry knows he should step out of his grasp. He doesn’t. “Your faith in me is charming.”

“Fuck off.” Still, he doesn’t move. Glowering up at Tom ( _god_ , does he hate that height difference, it somehow still makes him feel like a child), he moves in for the kill: “I know you loved Christmas at Hogwarts, too.”

Tom had said as much one time, just before sleep. He’d spent all his Christmases at Hogwarts; so had Harry, before Sirius. They both understood how to make a home out of nothing at all.

He lifts his hand from Harry’s shoulder now. “Don’t weaponize my childhood against me. You’re worse than he is.”

_He_ , absent context, always meant Dumbledore to Tom. Putting aside _that_ fight: “I’m not weaponizing anything, you great dramatic prick. I’m saying – I know Hogwarts means too much to you to let it come to this. That’s all.”

“Dolores has the blessing of the Ministry behind her.”

“Yeah, she does.”

“And all the most influential governors.”

“I know.”

“So doing it by above-board, respectable channels….”

“Oh god. If you’re going to blackmail someone, don’t tell me. I think I’m required to report things like that.”

Laughing softly, Tom prods him toward the door. “Goodnight, Harry.”

They’re at a place where they might be able to talk about how they ended last time. There’s familiarity between them, while most of the hostility has burned off. So, because Harry is incurably Gryffindor: “Do you want to go for a drink?”

When Tom looks momentarily surprised, Harry does his best not to backpedal. “I’m seeing someone tonight,” Tom says after a beat. Reaching for the door, he reiterates, “Goodnight.”

“Right.” And because he’s a Gryffindor and because Tom’s been touching him so casually and because he’s been wanking to this smouldering tension for weeks now: he grabs the front of Tom’s robes, pulling him a bit closer, and kisses him hard. “’Night,” he says against Tom’s warm mouth. And then he goes, before he can get himself into any deeper trouble.

 

He ends up at Sirius’s place, looking through a stack of takeaway menus. “You’ve got nowhere better to be on a Friday night than with two boring old men?” Remus asks as he settles at the countertop beside him. “Not that we don’t adore your company.”

“ _Boring_?” Sirius protests.

Harry makes a gesture in Sirius’s favor. “You’re the two most interesting old men I know,” he says, knocking his shoulder into Remus’s. “And no, I’ve got nowhere else to be tonight.”

“You should be out meeting people,” Sirius says. “You wouldn’t want your soulmate to be shagging someone else instead – “

“Sirius!” Remus scolds.

“Well, he wouldn’t. We’ll find you someone worth your time. Boys, girls, whoever? Another athlete? You’ve dated a hell of a lot of athletes.”

“Stop badgering him,” Remus says, as Harry buries his face in his hands with laughter.

“Who’s badgering?”

“You only ask rhetorical questions when you know you’re wrong – “

“Who’s asking rhetorical questions?”

Harry looks up in wonder and love. This is what he should want, he thinks, watching how easily Sirius and Remus _coexist_. And they bicker and banter, but it’s never cold or prickly, like –

God, what the _hell_ had he been thinking, kissing Tom?

He ends up taking a well-marked menu for a kebab place round the corner, picking up the phone. “The usual?” he tries asking Sirius and Remus, but by this time they’re in a world of their own, Sirius’s fingers in Remus’s beltloops to hold him close, both grinning with a private joke. It’s completely sweet and good and pure. And it’s… nothing like what Harry wants.

Dammit.

 

The final visit to Hogwarts is at the end of November, and Harry is just… dreading it. Every return to the castle is like a slow death of everything he’s ever loved about it. Opening his cloak closet, he decides that today will be poetic, and he pulls on the cloak that he hadn’t worn since last seeing Dumbledore. It’s fitting.

Predictably, Tom makes no mention of Harry having kissed him a fortnight ago. Harry wonders what he’d be like flustered. Even in sex he had a certain composure about him.

Oh goddammit, he cannot be thinking these sort of things at work.

The Christmas decorations should have been pulled out by now, ready to be hung. Instead, the castle has never felt so sterile. They’ve arrived just in time to see students leaving from breakfast for their morning classes, and it had never been an especially energetic time of day, but everything just feels particularly heavy and gloomy now.

The typical group settles in Umbridge’s office: McGonagall with her hair in a more severe bun than usual, Governor Pillburn looking plump and cheery, and Grimshaw and Tom trading notes out of their portfolios. Harry and Morag take their respective places on either side of the door.

Dolores begins the meeting triumphant: she’s just drafted next year’s course offerings, with Muggle Studies out and a class called Civic Duty in. (Even across the room, Harry can see a muscle in McGonagall’s cheek twitch.) Professor Trelawney will be offered a severance package. Professor Binns will be exorcised if necessary. “And career counseling as early as third year,” Umbridge says cheerily, shaking out a scroll. “It’s never too early to begin job training.”

“Actually – “ Grimshaw begins.

“Don’t you agree, Justice Riddle?” Umbridge says over her.

Somehow she’d come to see Tom as the most sympathetic figure in the room, apart from Governor Pillburn. He never argued with her, he was a fellow Slytherin, and apparently his – _associations_ with purebloods were widely known. Now, he spins a quill through his long fingers. “It will serve them well.”

Again, Harry’s magic surges in anger and loss and grief. He _cannot_ lose control of it this time. He swallows hard.

Umbridge is saying that before the new year, the governors will sign off on her plan, and of course then everyone may have a copy. It feels final. It feels terrible.

And because everything was done through the proper channels and proper protocol, there’s nothing the Wizengamot can do to stop it. Grimshaw has a particularly resolute expression as she closes her portfolio. Tom looks… satisfied? Harry really can’t stand him in this moment. Together, they move to leave, to take one of the ground floor floos.

But halfway down the staircases, he stops. “I’ve left my cloak in Dolores’s office,” he says. “Auror Potter, come with me. Leonora, I’ll return to your office this afternoon?”

She gives a tired nod; she and Morag go onward. And Harry turns to follow Tom back up the staircases.

When they’re alone, Harry mutters, “You seem pleased with all this.”

“Do I?”

“You said as much.”

“Hm,” Tom says in a placating way. They climb the stairs of the Headmistress’s tower.

And this time, Harry is made to wait outside. “I’ll be but a moment,” Tom promises, letting himself in.

It takes much longer than a moment, but when Tom re-emerges it is with Umbridge herself. “ – Really, it was an embarrassment for the school and for Dumbledore personally,” Tom is saying, offering his arm to her to descend the tower. He doesn’t acknowledge Harry’s questioning look. “She deserves an apology, for the way her death was handled then.”

Harry follows, curious if a little irritated at being ignored. They make their way to the ground floor, though the Great Hall and to one of the quieter corridors. Outside a girls’ toilet, Tom stops Harry. “Wait out here. Don’t allow anyone else in.”

“What are you doing,” Harry mutters.

Umbridge clicks her tongue. “Insubordination,” she says. “You won’t last long in the Ministry with _that_ sort of cheek.”

“Harry and I have an understanding,” Tom assures her. ( _Do they_?) “Nevertheless,” he says to Harry, “keep everyone else out.”

“Right. Yes, sir,” he amends. Tom enters with Umbridge, shutting the door behind them.

And he waits. The school is quiet, everyone in class now. He can hear some faint sounds from the Great Hall, that must be the house elves cleaning up from breakfast. He fidgets, shoving his hands in his pockets.

There is something wedged in the corner of his cloak’s pocket.

Frowning, he digs it out from the seam. A ring. Not his ring. Gold, with a large obsidian stone inset.

His stomach twists as he recognizes it. The ring Dumbledore had been wearing in the months before his death.

It’s heavy, solid. It’s not Harry’s aesthetic, but – he misses Dumbledore right now. He slips it on his middle finger, watching the way the stone catches the light.

_Crash!_

There’s a loud noise from inside the toilets, as though something has just been hurled at the wall. “Shit – “ Harry’s pulling out his wand, shoving it into the keyhole because the wards are closed but Aurors can get in anywhere –

He sees Umbridge first, holding Tom’s wand aloft as she darts across the wet stone floor. Tom had been blasted into the wall beside the door, hard enough that there’s a smear of blood where his skull had cracked. “All this time,” Umbridge is saying. “I expected better of _you_ , at least.”

“You shouldn’t have. – Oh thank fuck,” Tom says when he glances at the opening door, seeing Harry run in. And then he neatly plucks Harry’s wand from his hand.

“Hey – !”

But Tom is already firing back, hexes meant to petrify Umbridge, to burn her, to induce vertigo. The few that do land drive her back toward the sinks in the center of the room – and Harry doesn’t understand what he’s looking at for a moment, but one of the sinks had been _opened_ , a dark void that makes the air damp and dank. And it seems that Tom is being strategic in corralling Umbridge backwards toward it.

So he’s pulling Dumbledore’s wand from his holster, running in with it held high. “Stop – what the fuck – Tom, _stop_ – “

There’s a sound from the void.

Tom is running in, casting _reducto_ after _reducto_ , cornering Umbridge up against the sink’s edge. “You’ve got no respect for this school,” he says coldly, and then – he _hisses_. And another hiss, in response, echoes from within the sink.

Harry goes cold as a great snake, dark green with a red plume, lifts itself from the sink. And Umbridge has her back to it, and Tom is hissing again, and Harry sees it all happening too quickly – “No!”

The snake strikes just as Harry lunges forward, shoving Umbridge out of the way, so the snake’s dripping fangs only graze her shoulder, ripping through her cardigan and making her flesh immediately blacken with necrotic damage. But then Harry is shoving her out of the way, and then he’s face to face with this massive snake, its gleaming yellow eyes narrow and vicious. “Stupefy!” He hits it right where its heart should be, and the eyes go dull as it wilts, venom now dripping onto the stone floor.

He doesn’t recognize that Tom’s put a hand on his shoulder until it becomes tight enough to hurt. And when he looks back, Tom is – _truly_ – shocked. “You should have died,” he says lowly.

“Lucky shot,” Harry demurs, and he’s looking past Tom where Umbridge is convulsing, barely conscious where she’s fallen.

“No. Harry. That is a basilisk. Why didn’t you die?” Tom demands.

“I don’t know. Can this wait?” Harry asks in exasperation. He’s pulling Tom across the room, standing over Umbridge. “You wanted to kill her,” he says, crouching.

“I might have, still.”

But Harry can feel – somehow – that this wand understands the power of death. That it may still be able to rescind this damage. “A vow,” he says, more to Tom than to Umbridge herself. “You can’t – please don’t kill her. You’re better than that.”

Tom’s mouth quirks, as though Harry has made a joke. “Really, I’m not.”

“Then – I want you to be better than that. At least.”

Tom kneels beside Harry, plucking his wand from Umbridge’s robes. And when he hands Harry back his own wand, his gaze alights on the ring. A strangled noise. “That is _mine_.”

“It was Dumbledore’s,” Harry says. “He dropped it in my pocket the night he died. Look – _later_. She’s still dying. I’ll heal her if you can be our bonder.”

Tom is fascinated by him, this newfound power and his inability to die. “Fine. Dolores,” he says, casting a spell to position her flat on her back. “Listen.”

“I’ll heal you,” Harry offers, looking into her scared and bleary eyes, “if you resign. And give the position to McGonagall. And say nothing to anyone.”

She opens her mouth but she can’t finds words for a moment. Finally: “Yes.”

It’s a strange feeling, to be implicated in this – darkness that belongs to Tom. But Tom himself is unmoved, holding his wand over their clasped hands to perform the vow. And then Harry can feel the restlessness in Dumbledore’s elder wand, and before he even speaks an incantation, it is drawing magic and venom from the wound.

There is color in Umbridge’s cheeks again. And then Tom offers a hand to help her stand, as though he is a gentleman and she is a lady. He pauses to close the sink with another hissed incantation. They walk in silence back to the office.

 

Tom offers to deliver Dolores’s resignation to the Department of Education himself, and Harry accompanies him. Everything between them now feels… thick. Significant. And then Tom turns to him. “Come back to my flat. We can’t speak here.”

“Because saying _we can’t speak here_ won’t sound dodgy at all if we’re overheard,” Harry says, but nevertheless he follows Tom to the floos.

 

They step out into the same flat Harry had once known so well, and somehow they fall into the same patterns they had lived when they were together: Harry drops his cloak on the coat rack beside the floo; Tom strides into the kitchen ahead of him. They both need a drink.

Harry still wears Dumbledore’s ring. Tom’s ring? He doesn’t understand its significance, only that there is magic in it too. He’s fiddling with it as he takes a seat on the sofa, as Tom returns and sits across from him. It is only noon, but there is whiskey.

And when Harry has swallowed a mouthful of it, he’s able to say, “You talk to snakes.”

A flicker of a smile across Tom’s face. “I’m the last heir of Slytherin. He spoke to snakes. Parseltongue.” A pause. “That castle was always mine. My birthright, my home. I never intended it to fall to such – profane misuse. But I wouldn’t be able to get her alone until she trusted me to this extent before.”

The heir of Slytherin. The heir of Hogwarts. “And you think Dumbledore turned you out of your own castle.”

“He did.”

“Okay.” He’s pulling the ring off, intending to give it back to Tom.

But Tom shakes his head. “Keep it,” he says. “Keep it _safe_ , specifically.”

“… Why?”

“Because Dumbledore left it to you, obviously.” At Harry’s skeptical look, he sighs. “I will explain a great deal of things in time. Just take it for now.”

_In time_. As though they’d continue to see one another. Harry slips the ring, heavy and strangely warm, back on his finger. “Okay.”

A moment of quiet, then: “Why didn’t you die?”

“I told you, I don’t know.” The wand was powerful, but he hadn’t even cast anything to protect himself.

“You survived Grindelwald. You survived a basilisk….” Tom is studying him over the top of his glass. “You’re a very curious person, Harry Potter.”

And it’s his tone, that tone with _that_ look, that makes Harry go warm. He’s going to do something stupid, he can already tell. “Yeah,” he says, because really he hasn’t got answers for Tom. But answers might be secondary to what Tom wants. Tom wants _power_. And Harry’s become a far more attractive person to him now.

It’s imperfect, it’s so imperfect. They’re probably still bad for each other, but when Tom has pushed Harry backwards, kissing him with whiskey still in his mouth, he doesn’t care. “You are – _ugh_ – infuriating,” Harry mutters as Tom pulls open his robe, his shirt, kissing a fiery line down his chest.

This time, they never make it to the bed.

Instead, Harry’s got his legs thrown high around Tom’s waist, hips tilted back, as Tom plunges in and in and in. Their hands and mouths are still everywhere: but close enough to one another that Harry can leave sharp bite marks along Tom’s chest and shoulders. He finds that he still remembers Tom’s taste, his smell, and it’s so – _good_. It’s satisfying.

So Harry digs his fingernails into Tom’s back, because he loves the idea of drawing blood. And then Tom _growls_ , shoving Harry’s knees higher until he’s almost bent double on himself, until he’s panting for breath, grabbing Tom’s throat, squeezing carefully.

They always fuck as though they want to hurt each other. It is cathartic. It is perfect. So when Tom’s rubbing Harry off in time with his thrusts – and he’s so fucking close, they both are – he arches to bite Tom’s lips bruised as they both come, gasping and shuddering into each other.

And then, for a moment, Tom slumps fully into Harry’s arms, quiet. And this, this is good too.

 

After some cleaning spells and some water, they’re both uncharacteristically hesitant. Harry plunges in first. “Come with me to Slughorn’s Christmas party next month?” he offers, charming.

Tom pushes his hair back from his face. “A school party is hardly the most – dignified public stage.”

“Yeah. All your Ministry Yule balls will be boring and stodgy. Or,” Harry points, “trade you.”

“I still – couldn’t be attached. To anyone.”

“Don’t be a coward,” Harry says. “Nobody cares, honestly.”

“They do. They will.”

“Then tell them I’m really powerful. And charming. Definitely worth your time.”

He finds Tom so attractive when he rolls his eyes; it makes him look so _human_. “Yes, darling. That is,” he sits up, to look at Harry properly. “We can go – _out_. But I have professional decorum to maintain.”

“You fucking romantic,” Harry says. “Anyway, if you ever want to leave the Wizengamot, you should get a position at Hogwarts.”

Tom considers this. “Perhaps I will.”

“Your great fuck-off snake is probably lonely.”

“You.” Tom brandishes his wand, but it’s not actually a threat. “I’d better keep you around. Otherwise I will be forced to Obliviate you.”

“Yeah, alright.”

 

It’s not perfect. Tom is prickly and Harry is impatient and they’re both still sometimes tripped up by the wizarding world they didn’t grow up in. Tom won’t actually leave the Wizengamot unless he’s got to, he loves the power too much. But at least a few times a week, Harry locks his own office and takes the lift to Tom’s, where they’ll leave together to go out, to dinner and shows and simply being in each other's company.

And on the evening that Tom is to pick Harry up to attend Slughorn’s Christmas party, Sirius lingers at Harry’s flat just a bit too long, accidentally-on-purpose. And it is fine: Tom is charming, and Sirius tells them to say hi to Minnie for him, and Harry is so happy. And when they floo into McGonagall’s office together, it is with Tom’s hand at the small of Harry’s back.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Come find me on Tumblr [here](https://sofiabanefics.tumblr.com/)!


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